Filling out forms is typically impersonal drudgery. Although the Universal Forms Engine described in U.S. Pat. No. 6,345,278 reduces the drudgery by automatically completing parts of an electronic form using information that was previously entered and stored, completing forms is still a solitary and impersonal activity. The help and encouragement one gets, in any, for completing any for—tax form, admissions application form, job application, etc.—comes only in the form of a direct mentor (e.g., telephoning or taking your tax form to the IRS help office or to your CPA) or in the form of written instructions.
If an organization sponsoring a form wants to personalize the forms completion process to encourage users to complete its forms, that organization must hire counselors to directly assist the applicant, either by telephone or in person. This method of providing support and encouragement, however, is very expensive. Moreover, it is necessary to coordinate the work schedule of the counselors with the anticipated timing of the requests for help from the users. Such coordination is imperfect at best and can result in excess labor costs during some periods and long waits for help at other times. Also, such counselors are typically assigned at random to users and cannot be readily matched to each individual user asking for assistance.
The seemingly inherent impersonalization and drudgery attendant to the process of filling out forms is particularly problematic for an institution, such as a college or university or an employer, that competes for qualified applicants. In the case of colleges, millions of dollars are spent to recruit and encourage students to apply, only to then place them into an application process that is impersonal drudgery and that can discourage them from completing the application. The efforts of the institution to encourage someone to join are simply belied by the process.